Two matching black fine line tattoos of stick figure girls holding a connected string, one on each ankle, with white canvas trainers visible.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Matching stick figure ankle tattoos

Fine line · Ankle · Black and grey · Photo

The image shows two matching tattoos of simple stick figures, each a girl with a striped dress and short hair, placed on the inside of each ankle. Each figure holds one end of a thin line that runs between the two ankles, like a tin can telephone. The linework is thin and uniform in black ink with no shading or colour, and the composition is centred on the two legs above white canvas trainers.

Fine line Ankle Stick figure Girl String Matching tattoo Dress

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Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The string was baler twine, bought from Mr Pascoe's shed for a penny a yard, and Ruby tied one tin to the gate at Number Nine while I tied the other to the railings outside the chandler's. We were eight. The rule was that you kept your end taut, or the words went slack and dropped into the gutter where the gulls could have them.

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Ruby had a voice like a foghorn and I had a habit of going quiet whenever the boats came in, so most of our messages ran one way. She told me the gulls had stolen the pier clock. I told her the tide had got into my shoes. Every evening at six we stood on our own steps, hauling the twine tight, waiting for the other to speak, while the harbour knocked against the wall beneath us as if it were keeping time for us both.

In September her father took a job at a farm up the valley, a place with no sea and no gulls, only sheep and a church bell that rang late. On the last evening the tin at Number Nine went quiet. When I pulled the twine I found a folded square of paper knotted to it, written in pencil: HOLD ON. So I held on. I held through the winter when the string frosted stiff and the cans rattled in the wind, and I held through the years when the railings were painted and the chandler's closed.

I still have my tin. Some nights I take up the twine and give it a small tug, and after a moment, so faint I might be imagining it, there comes a tug back. I tell myself it is only the tide.